Sister City Tour Visiting Bangor

Folks from El Salvador are in Bangor as part of a sister city relationship.Meghan Hayward explains.In the 1980s delegations of people from the United States visited El Salvador as villagers were returning to their homes following the Civil War in that country.”And the relationships were so deep and important that the people in the US and the people in El Salvador decided that it would be important to keep those relationships going and continue learning from one another.”Which is how the organization Power in Community Alliances, or PICA, has maintained a sister city relationship with El Salvador.Salvadoran German Gonzales Alas is in Bangor.He’s a grassroots leader who started as a young activist in his country.He will make a presentation to local folks here.”Talking about people and their lives before they cross the borders. Because what we see often times are the people once they’ve crossed the border. And we think of them in terms of legalities or illegalities and sort of right versus wrong.”Through this partnerships members have found there is a lot of common ground between the people of both nations.”We’re realizing that people in El Salvador and other parts of the world are experiencing the same kinds of things and we’re realizing we are really more of the same than different.”Jan Morrill is originally from Bangor but lives in El Salvador now.She says she has taken a lot of valuable experiences from this.”Being able to see those community to community relationships and see how important they are.”Gonzales Alas says he will return to El Salvador with all sorts of new experiences.”Of course we hope that the international solidarity movement with El Salvador grows here in the United States. Especially with PICA because we hope the PICA committee can expand and have more people participating so that they can get to know more about the situation in El Salvador and also have the chance to go down and visit the rural organized communities and we think international solidarity is one of the most important things.”You’re invited to Wednesday night’s presentation at the PICA office, which is located at 170 Park Street in Bangor.It starts at seven.